The graduate student experience at McGill

Tag: Guillaume Viger

I just finished writing my master’s thesis and I am now waiting for formal signatures before I can submit it. The whole experience is still too fresh in my mind for me to provide an objective assessment, but one aspect of my graduate studies is worth talking about: doing research under a remote supervisor. We… Read More Long Distance Supervisorship

About two years ago I was attending the going-away party for a member of my lab. He had successfully defended his PhD thesis and landed a job overseas at a very well known internet company. We were ‘shooting the wind’ as the cool kids say and some drinks had been emptied before we ventured into… Read More We are all Philosophers

With temperatures as high as 32°C and humidity levels above 50%, Montreal sweltering summer heat has finally arrived. When your colleague, back from China, says the weather in Beijing was cool compared to Montreal, you know it’s hot. What is also heating up is work on the Thesis. The August deadline is looming on the… Read More The Summer is Heating up

Small talks are the bread and butter of graduate life. You know, those little pamphlets pinned to billboards across campus? Well, some of them don’t advertise an n’th tutoring service. They don’t advertise a social club, a new search engine or even a “Four year-old computer CHEAP!!!”. No, some of these pamphlets advertise small talks, in rooms you didn’t even… Read More Big Ideas, Small Talks

Some of his woodcuts are titled Puddle, Dolphins, and Metamorphosis. Though he did not have a significant mathematical background, he was fascinated by figures such as Necker Cubes that are contradictory. This artist usually made lithographs, including Still Life with Spherical Mirror, Relativity, and Drawing Hands. For ten points, name this 20th Century Dutch graphic artist whose pictures contained… Read More Keeping it trivial

This Monday, March 31st, McGill’s Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies, Office of Sustainability, and the Post-Graduate Students Society, hosted the third annual Three Minutes to Change the World event. It was a self-dubbed Ted-like event and it certainly delivered on that aspect. The students presenting (mostly Master’s students) gave dazzling performances both in English and in French. Let… Read More 3 Minutes to Change the World – Bilingual Audience Member Edition

One of the biggest challenges for someone starting to do research for the first time is finding a good problem to work on and the subsequent challenge is to define it clearly. Obviously, the next step is then to execute on it, but let’s not worry about this today! I had a hard time coming… Read More Problematic Problem Statement